Lee Schierer
03-01-2011, 9:00 AM
I had the unfortunate situation that an outside drain line for my house was damaged due to some other work we had done last summer. It hadn't been a problem until Sunday night. We had 18-24" of snow on the ground and then got heavy rain and 40+ temps. My two sump pumps couldn't keep up, one had a stuck check valve so it wasn't pumping to capacity and the second one got (pedestal type) flooded and tripped the ground fault. This allowed water to back up into the house. Fortunately I became aware of the problem at 3:00 a.m. Unfortunately I couldn't stop the water coming in so at 4:00 a.m. I had to turn off our heat system to prevent electrical damage due to flooding.
At 7:00 the local Home Depot opened and I rushed in and bought a portable sump pump. I picked up a Flotec Intelli pump, which is supposed to shut off if it doesn't detect water flow, ideal for pumping out a wet basement and garage. Well I connected the pump to a hose and it was working great, so I decided to go get a second pump. I hooked the second pump up and it would only run intermittently. I read the manual and it warns that the pump must be connected to hose no smaller than 3/4" for best performance, no problem, mine is 7/8, or so I thought.
After struggling with this pump for over an hour, I took it back and exchanged it for another. Hooked it up and had the same problem. Meanwhile the original pump is pumping just fine. I called the Customer support line. Waited 20 minutes to talk to someone. Finally the guy that answered, told me my hose was kinked. I assured him it was not. He said it was probably bad power to the pump that wasn't working so I switched plugs. It didn't matter. He said to swap out the two pumps on the two hoses. Which I did. Then neither would work. He then suggested testing the pump in a 5 gallon bucket. If it would run in a 5 gallon bucket, then the problem was my hoses not the pump. He also said the flow sensor would shut the pump off if there was too little flow or too much based on current sensing.
I ended up taking the Intella pump back for a dumb pump, which worked fine. Apparently in my set up the pump didn't have to work hard on the short hose I had and it would run as if there was no load due to the siphoning effect once the pump lifted the water over the high point in the hose. It would then shut off thinking there was no water to pump. The longer hose apparently had enough resistance that the pump didn't over speed and trip the sensor.
I wouldn't recommend this pump unless you have small hoses or have a ball valve to throttle the flow on a large diameter hose.
After 12 hours we finally got the water removed. I had a HVAC guy come and remove the controls for my heat pump system which had been submerged and LOML spent an hour with her hair dryer drying it off. Once the water was gone and I dried the inside of the heater cabinet the HVAC guy was able to reconnect the controls and everything worked. The house started at 64 degrees and dropped to 57 after 15 hours with no heat input.
I guess I'll be digging up the drain line once the weather warms up.
At 7:00 the local Home Depot opened and I rushed in and bought a portable sump pump. I picked up a Flotec Intelli pump, which is supposed to shut off if it doesn't detect water flow, ideal for pumping out a wet basement and garage. Well I connected the pump to a hose and it was working great, so I decided to go get a second pump. I hooked the second pump up and it would only run intermittently. I read the manual and it warns that the pump must be connected to hose no smaller than 3/4" for best performance, no problem, mine is 7/8, or so I thought.
After struggling with this pump for over an hour, I took it back and exchanged it for another. Hooked it up and had the same problem. Meanwhile the original pump is pumping just fine. I called the Customer support line. Waited 20 minutes to talk to someone. Finally the guy that answered, told me my hose was kinked. I assured him it was not. He said it was probably bad power to the pump that wasn't working so I switched plugs. It didn't matter. He said to swap out the two pumps on the two hoses. Which I did. Then neither would work. He then suggested testing the pump in a 5 gallon bucket. If it would run in a 5 gallon bucket, then the problem was my hoses not the pump. He also said the flow sensor would shut the pump off if there was too little flow or too much based on current sensing.
I ended up taking the Intella pump back for a dumb pump, which worked fine. Apparently in my set up the pump didn't have to work hard on the short hose I had and it would run as if there was no load due to the siphoning effect once the pump lifted the water over the high point in the hose. It would then shut off thinking there was no water to pump. The longer hose apparently had enough resistance that the pump didn't over speed and trip the sensor.
I wouldn't recommend this pump unless you have small hoses or have a ball valve to throttle the flow on a large diameter hose.
After 12 hours we finally got the water removed. I had a HVAC guy come and remove the controls for my heat pump system which had been submerged and LOML spent an hour with her hair dryer drying it off. Once the water was gone and I dried the inside of the heater cabinet the HVAC guy was able to reconnect the controls and everything worked. The house started at 64 degrees and dropped to 57 after 15 hours with no heat input.
I guess I'll be digging up the drain line once the weather warms up.